 I have long been fascinated with the mythos around the fertile darkness, the dark feminine. For many many years, I have felt that our culture has been too light focused (we are developmentally stuck in an endless "summer" in how we approach the world as consumers and in the way we work). The cycles of going within, letting fallow have been harmfully ignored and this is where the truly fertile soul work and wisdom-making takes place. We can gain spiritual insight from the light, but the dark turns that insight into body-and-soul-level wisdom. And I think that part of reclaiming our relationship to the darkness is dismantling the pejorative we have assigned to the dark and dense as "bad/evil/wounded" which frankly is also a root of racism and spiritual bypassing.
I especially love the myths that share our ancestor's understanding of these cycles. There is a good book "the descent to the goddess" that talks about the Inanna myth as a guide for "initiation" (as into greater soul mastery) for women especially, which has similarities to persephone's descent to the underworld. And recently I learned that there are even myths where RA, the Egyptian sun god, descends to the underworld and merges with Osiris, the ruler of the underworld. In my own experience with the masculine principle of the fae there is a chthonic (dark/underworld) aspect and a solar aspect that dance with each other throughout the cycle of the solar year. Just recently I was spending time with the myth about Gwyn Ap Nudd, the welsh faerie king, god of the wild, and keeper of the underworld who battles with Gwythyr, who is a solar deity, over the hand of the maiden Creiddylad who is the embodiment of sovereignty. Gwyn wins, interestingly - it is not the solar that wins. What has come in my meditations on this myth is that sovereignty is the equivalent to the sacred void and that both the dark aspects and light aspects vie for her attention, but she has a special affinity for the dark. This makes me think of the taoist principles of the emptiness that can flow through nature if unimpeded. When the dark and light forces are in right relationship with the void, the state of nature's sovereignty, then order is restored. It also makes sense that the dark and the void are associated with each other (thus Gwyn winning), because they both are void of light. Also with scientific principles of entropy... energy eventually dissipates (unless there is a new injection of energy). I think that some have interpreted this as "renewal always comes from above, the solar" but in the Innanna myth there is a map for how renewal can come from below, in the darkness. Chinese medicine also recognizes this and the work of Lorie Eve Dechar is especially powerful in showing that the lighter energies (Shen) are not the only sources for renewal, but it can come from the denser energies (the Po and Zhi)... and in some ways the work that is initiated from the dark/ground/dense up causes more foundational shifts than the more solar inputs. In the celtic wheel of the year the cycle of creation really is initiated at Imbolc (Feb 1st) and from a tantric astrology perspective this is the root of the root where the energy is at its deepest descent and then rises again through the chakras (peaking at Lammas in August). I find it interesting that the new cycle of creation doesn’t start at the solstice, that there are 6 weeks of laying fallow - of deep rest - after the longest night of the year before the new cycle is initiated. That speaks to us about the nature of our own creativity in that when we enter what feels like darkness, we are actually just beginning a longer period of stillness before regeneration can take place. Overall in my mind we need to better honor the dark, the chthonic, the underworld, as it is just as important part of the creative life force on this planet as the light, but we also need to come into deeper relationship with the void, which gets even less attention than sacred darkness (or gets mixed up and confused with darkness). I will also share that my own experience with bipolar - if I get too light or high vibe focused there is an equally dark polarity that forms in the world of my psyche that must be integrated. If I stay oriented more towards the void, a place of neutrality that favors neither light nor dark, I can interact with anything from the full ray of the spectrum from a place of equanimity. It just feels better to my mind, body and soul. This is really why I felt called to offer "Wyrd" at the first new moon in January - as a way to tune into the deeper nature of reality and forces of sovereignty, the sacred void, in a way that is not tied to any particular tradition, but rather explores it as a mystic would, through first-hand experience. Learn more.
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 We are in Sagittarius season. Sagittarius is a fire sign and it marks the start of the alchemical cycle of the zodiac where the elements are taking an “elder” aspect of the element and “becoming” that element - as in Sagittarius has “become” fire, spirit, that thing that creatively moves through all life in an eagerness to explore and become… heart becoming more heart in a deep and creatively explosive way. It is fitting that we have eruptions on Mauna Loa and in Indonesia at this time. Aries, another fire sign, is the youthful, playful experimentation of the embodiment of fire and Leo’ fire is about developing a more masterful way of operating skillfully with the element, but Sagittarius is the wise embodiment of the element that an elder would show. I see sagittarius as the spiritual fire that enlivens us even when we are surrounded by darkness, even when everything else is stripped away. This would have been the time of the year where people huddled around their fires and told stories or the shaman would take mushrooms and journey to inner landscapes and outer realms. Sagittarius has this journeying quality to it. It gives me a sense of spiritual fire as something that is curious and seeks new insight that has meaning and depth - insight that in and of itself contributes something to the world. I recently attended a herbal workshop by Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue where he talked about the “fire in the head” as a way of expressing times where we get profound spiritual insight and sometimes find ourselves experiencing different layers of reality. I mentioned mushrooms, but according to Seán other herbs like yarrow and mugwort (a moon herb) can also bring on these states. I’ve also been shown that this is a time when the solar aspect of reality has descended into the underworld or Otherworld and that with this descent is an enormous fertility/vitality that will re-emerge in the spring. This is the last push of inner activity before a period of lying fallow from the solstice to imbolc, when the next creative cycle activates on a quantum level. It may seem like the natural world sleeps at this time, but there is a lot working behind the scenes.
And then there is the Gemini full moon. Gemini has a similar explorative quality, but it is with the airy mind, not the fiery spirit. As an adolescent element, Gemini brings a playful quality to its explorations - trying out one idea and then disposing it for another or holding paradoxical ideas with ease. What if it is all true? What if none of it is true? Gemini holds these questions with a curious fascination and creativity. Sagittarius, on the other hand, is a little more serious, like life and death, about the Truth (with a capital “T”) it seeks, perhaps because this is a season where death is so close. There is a shared curiosity, but where Gemini is a bit more flippant, Sagittarius brings a gravitas to their explorations. What I have been surprised to learn is that the truest expression of an undistorted Gemini energy plays with these paradoxes from a deep sense of devotion, a heart and mind that is open to the world with a profound desire to touch the ineffable. At the heart of the matter is a dedication to the possibility that existence holds. For this full moon, you may need to nourish yourself with some deeply embodying activities, because these fire and air energies can be ungrounding. Now is the time to soak in a hot bath or have some nourishing soup. But you can also move with the energies by journaling, dancing, making art that is explorative or meaningful. What piques your curiosity or calls to you for deeper exploration? What thoughts can be tended by the wisdom of your spiritual heart? Enjoy the openness to new mental and spiritual paradigms that this time can bring.  I love the lunar/solar oppositions… they remind us that wherever we are in our solar transit, that we have a bit of the energy of the year that has passed… and the year to come… with us.
At this moment of Scorpio sun where all around us is decaying, letting go, returning to the earth, we celebrate the Taurus full moon. Taurus, whose season peaks in May, brings her fecund, verdant glory. Taurus teaches us about being abundant with our creative energy, even when all around us life is turning to death and hibernating. Nature is not stingy in how it spends its resources. She is bold and oriented to an ostentatious beauty that tantalizes the senses (think of the red and golden leaves that are falling). Perhaps this is why we love richly spiced foods at this time of year… our abundance goes from the garden to the warmth of a kitchen on these long dark nights. And Scorpio reminds us that blossoms wilt, not all mating calls are answered, and the energy put into each created thing eventually becomes compost for the next creative cycle. To me, Scorpio, being a water sign, is like the deep deep waters where the detritus settles, full of silt, decaying mineral, plant and animal life. It is these places of death that provide the nutrients for new life. So many places in the world rely on the nutrients from annual floods to create the conditions for farming. Scorpio holds the fecund power of death and rebirth. Scorpio is also connected to the deeper sexual animal instincts. This is the time when the Hawthorn berries are just edging past ripe, a plant whose flowers, according to Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue, hold the same organic compounds as is found in human sexual and menstrual fluid… literally the life force and death process of the human reproductive system. This tree is mythically known for connecting the human to the faerie realms. The faerie realm is also said to be opposite seasonally from the middle world we live in. So they are in Taurus season when we are in Scorpio. I also have been celebrating SO many birthdays in the last few weeks, so there is an abundance of new life that emerges even in this time of dying back to the roots. There is something hugely potent during this time around fertility, death and rebirth and nature spirits hold intimate knowledge of this wisdom. This full moon is accompanied by a lunar eclipse at 2am on November 8th. This is of course the election day in the US and so we can expect some turbulence. Lunar eclipses reset us, emotionally, foundationally, at a deep level. This is a mirror eclipse as to the one that occurred in May (the only moon circle we had to cancel due to general chaos), so hold on tight for some dredging of the personal and collective Scorpio waters… in the name of the Taurus fertility goddess. So on this full moon, think of things being stirred up and cleaned out. How do you need to tidy up your mental, emotional, spiritual houses? What deeper, maybe unconscious parts need to be incorporated in new ways in order for you to come into wholeness? And I feel we are invited to play with the creative cycles of death and rebirth. Where is my creative energy abundant and what is actively composting? What is hidden in the deep waters that wants to come to the surface in service to the larger creative force of my life?  We are in Libra season and this time is a potent one for me, so I will start by honoring the sun that our full moon is reflecting. When I recently took some of the essence I am making for this zodiac, the sense of energy running down towards the roots was strong. This is the season where trees and plants are pulling their energy back from growth and returning it to their roots. This combined with Libra’s relational nature makes me think of the mycelial network that interweaves between so much of nature.
Like the energy in the roots descending, alchemically our energy is also descending at this time. In tantric astrology Libra continues the dropping of our life force in the chakras back towards our own roots from the crown (Leo) to brow (Virgo) to now the throat. Libra truly is the creative void of the throat chakra where possibilities abound and adapts find their truth and express it in the world. Libra is an air sign, which through her relational nature makes me think of ideas, desires, needs being communicated between people. She is a cardinal sign, which means even though she is air, she shapes and directs the currents of earthly life through her strong communications, communications which can often feel like they emerge from the intelligence of the void. Libra has come to me as a portal. She is officially opening us to the time where in the northern hemisphere the darkness is more abundant than light. At this time the veil between us and the otherworld (the ancestors, fey, and other spirits) is thinner and we are invited into deeper relationship with the unseen. And Libra brings a kind of beauty and harmony to these relationships with Venus as her ruling planet. She rules the seventh house, the house of relationships and brings the wisdom of the void, the emptiness that runs through all of life as a silent, quantum, force. Those who entrain and follow the force, like the Taoists so eloquently describe, find that the cycles of death and rebirth flow with ease. And yet, we are not just relational beings, we have a sovereignty which the Aries full moon reminds us of. One of the lessons of my work with Aries has been that while it holds the energy of hope, courage, perseverance, and individuation, in its highest form it does so with a deep sense of interconnection, of connection to and partnership with the larger forces of creation. In some ways we are all portals for the forces of creation to act through us. The primal essence of sacred emptiness, of the void, which all emerges from and returns to, speaks through all of creation as the Tao or the Buddhist sense of the emptiness that is the true nature of all things. In this way the Aries sense of becoming “me” is rooted in a profound sense of my connection with the source that is all things. There is no final individuation, only a sense of becoming more of my part of the whole. I’ve come to understand that when we start to entrain with the forces of nature, like the rotation of the earth around the sun and the seasonal patterns that are expressed through that rotation, then we start to come back into a more intimate relationship with the primal force that speaks through all things. It is a way to “remember” in a world of forgetting. Aries can often play into the “forgetting” with its wild individualism and Libra brings us back into a sense of relationship. So on this full moon it may be lovely to take some time to tune into the sacred void and appreciate how it inspires your unique being and life. Some find the void to be an uncomfortable place/being, so take some time to make friends with it, maybe make offerings to it. And do some digging into how the void is moving through your life. What is unfolding for you and how? Are there blocks that you need to engage your Aries will to address? Are there places where you are pushing too hard or not following the flow, which can equally impede your creative process? What is receding for you and how might this actually nourish your roots? Wherever you are in your journey, may this coming time of sacred darkness be nourishing for you! Meditation Allow your body to sink towards the earth, imagining your energy moving downward like the sap of the trees around us returning to the roots. We are in the time of returning to place of origins, the dark womb that life emerges from. As you breathe, notice the pause between breaths, this is a portal, the void, the place where the cycles inhale and exhale meet. And because it is the place where cycles meet, it is deeply relational, bringing a beautiful rhythm and harmony to all it touches. This is the essence of the Libra sun our full moon is reflecting. Now notice the inner fire that enlivens your being. The warmth of your body. This is the fire of the Aries moon. Take a moment to feel the liveliness of your heartbeat. As it beats, inwardly whisper the phrase, “this is my heart”. Bring a sense of gratitude to the expression of heart that you uniquely bring to the world. What does your heart dream? What does your heart love? How does your heart love? And feel into those toughened places in your heart that life may have caused to constrict and bring some compassion to how even these places are a unique expression of the whole that is you. And also bring attention to how your heart is formed from strands of DNA passed on from generations of lives, made of building blocks that are found in wild nature as well as the stars above. There is a way in which you are uniquely you, but you are also interwoven from all of creation. Take a moment of appreciation for your unique expression of life and its interconnection with the past, present and future of all things.  “Birthing” is the word that is coming through strongly for this full moon in Pisces. Pisces is a very watery gestational energy… the place where possibilities are abundant and the yet-to-be are not quite pinned down. It can hold paradox, its energy swimming seemingly in two directions at once. It is not good at decision-making, because it is in the place beyond decisions where the potential of everything exists. As the end of the zodiac cycle, it holds the culmination of everything that has come before. And yet it is the birthplace of the new cycle, of all that is yet to come.
This watery moon is reflecting the very practical, real, and down-to-earth Virgo sun. This is a sun that knows how to choose. It knows what to birth and when. It is both the adult who lives with practical groundedness and the child they bring into the world, coming fresh and new into incarnation, emerging from the watery womb into living, breathing, functional reality. This is the season of the end of the harvest in the northern hemisphere. The last of the canning and preserving for the winter months would be taking place now. It is a practical time where one is not just basking in the abundance of the summer months, but there is a frugality, a planning for the times where this plenty will be needed for survival. I feel like in some ways our culture is in this late-summer season… we have been overly abundant in our adolescent energy of consumption and are waking up to the reality that we must act to preserve the abundance that has been offered to us. Winter is coming. I watch the drying effect of the long summer season on the plants around my home and I realize that the long summer season of our culture is having a similar effect on the earth. As the summers get hotter and drier do we adapt by planting more hardy native species or do we tap into the limited water resources available to us? These are the very practical considerations Virgo is prepared to help us make. So what will we learn from this time of waking up to the cycles of earth’s fertility? Will we tap into our inner Virgo and make the wise discernments needed? Or are we still collectively in the watery womb of Pisces, still weaving in possibilities so that when we emerge it is with the wisdom of the depths? Or will we doom ourselves by not following the wisdom of the seasons, trapping ourselves in a blinded endless summer that can only mean our doom? So as you tune into the wisdom this full moon has for you, think of the discernment you are making for your life and the life of this planet. What is still gestational in you and what is ready to be made real?  This full moon in Sagittarius is an especially yummy one for me. My natal moon is in Sagittarius and I feel this placement helps to fire my spiritual knowing as well as my love for travel, for exploring the inner and outer worlds with a fiery zest. Sagittarius is a fire sign and it marks the start of the alchemical cycle of the zodiac where the elements are expressed as a “becoming” - as in Sagittarius has “become” fire, spirit, that thing that creatively moves through all life in an eagerness to explore and become… heart becoming more heart in a deep and creatively explosive way. Aries is the raw new exploration of fire as we experience in our youth and Leo is about an adult mastery of fire, but Sagittarius is the wise embodiment of the element that an elder would show. It is also ruled by Jupiter, which adds to its expansive energy of joy and richness.
This moon reflects a Gemini sun. Gemini has similar elements of seeking and exploration, but is much more on an intellectual level, represented by the air element. Where Sagittarius plays with spirit, Gemini plays with ideas. And ideas can be full of paradox and uncertainty which actually serves to create new possibilities and inventive forms of thought. This season has shown me that nature holds no permanent form - blossoms wilt and all of the amazing greening we see around us now will eventually go back to the earth. What I have been surprised to learn is that the truest expression of an undistorted Gemini energy plays with these paradoxes from a deep sense of devotion, a heart and mind that is open to the world with a profound desire to touch the ineffable. It is like Gemini is the space between things, the primordial void where all possibilities are held, and Sagittarius is the spirit that emerges from the void into the dance of spiritual creativity and exploration. Ruled by Mercury, the messenger, who has an independent flare, but is extremely relational, albeit sometimes in a superficial way. Mercury holds a curiosity about all things that can be gossipy at times, but at the heart of the matter is a dedication to the possibility that existence holds. We are also in the time when the hawthorn have been blooming. They represent the threshold between human and faery realms. It is through the mind, more specifically the imagination, that this threshold is crossed. Gemini knows how to play in these imaginal realms and Sagittarius has the spiritual heart to navigate them. There are tales of musicians going to the faery hills to learn new songs and this full moon is imbued with the energy of this kind of cross-boundary exploration. This particular moon has a particular influence from Neptune (square the moon), which I’ve been experiencing over the past few days as a cloudiness, haziness and even fatigue. I’ve been wanting to be in the dream world more than normal. During our authentic movement session yesterday (shout out to Rebecca) our collective work helps me fine tune this haziness and hone it into a creative dreaminess. So tuning into the body and allowing the more subconscious, flowing, dreamy parts of ourselves come online can be supportive to your experience of this moon. This full moon holds a lot of passion, creativity and possibilities. Our work may be to open ourselves to the play of this energy while grounding it and embodying it. Enjoy the exploration!  Happy full moon to you! This full moon in Scorpio is accompanied by a full lunar eclipse. To me, Scorpio, being a water sign, is like the deep deep waters where the detritus settles, full of silt, decaying mineral, plant and animal life. It is these places of death that provide the nutrients for new life. So many places in the world rely on the nutrients from annual floods to create the conditions for farming. Scorpio holds the fecund power of death and rebirth.
Scorpio is also connected to the deeper sexual animal instincts. This is the time when the Hawthorn blooms and I was told by a mentor that the flowers of the hawthorn hold the same chemicals as is found in human sexual and menstrual fluid… literally the life force and death process of our reproductive system. This tree is mythically known for connecting the human to the faerie realms. The faerie realm is also said to be opposite seasonally from the middle world we live in. So they are in Scorpio season when we are in Taurus. There is something hugely potent during this time around animal sexual instincts, fertility, death and rebirth and nature spirits hold intimate knowledge of this wisdom. So if Scorpio is the deepest part of a body of water, this partial eclipse (on Sunday around 9pm PT) is like a dredging of the bottom of this body of water. Think of things being stirred up and cleaned out. How do you need to tidy up your mental, emotional, spiritual houses? What deeper, maybe unconscious parts need to be incorporated in new ways in order for you to come into wholeness? This moon reflects the Taurus sun. I have been thoroughly enjoying Taurus season this year. She has been teaching me about being abundant with my creative energy. I look at the trees full of flowers and realize that nature is not stingy in how it spends its resources. She is bold and oriented to an ostentatious beauty that tantalizes the senses. I recently attended a talk by my ancestral medicine teacher where he discussed the importance of being able to ask for what one wants but also stay resilient when there is a rejection or a “no” given to one’s request. I see the flowers around me as open requests for pollination - there is a fertile hope there. But not every bud will become a fruit. Opening one’s self vulnerably to the world is a call of nature and knowing that not every call will be answered is also natural. To me this is a bit of the Scorpio opposition during this time of fecundity. Blossoms wilt, not all calls are answered, and the energy put into each created thing eventually becomes compost for the next creative cycle. So on this full moon, I feel we are invited to play with the creative cycles of death and rebirth. Where is my creative energy abundant and what is actively composting? What is hidden in the deep waters that wants to come to the surface in service to the larger creative force of my life?  I’ve been asked by the nature spirits I work with to start to co-create essences (energetic medicine) for each of the zodiac signs over a year-long process. This month I started this work with Aries, the sign that begins what is traditionally thought of as the new cycle of the yearly circumnavigation around the zodiac. In my work with the essence I am making I have come to know Aries in a different way, in a way that brings what we traditionally think of a very independent sign back into relationship, which makes it more reflective of its opposite sign, Libra.
This full moon in Libra reflecting an Aries sun allows us to explore these paradigms of individuation and interconnection in a way that can be nourishing to the soul. One of the lessons of my work with Aries has been that while it holds the energy of hope, courage, perseverance, and individuation, in its highest form it does so with a deep sense of interconnection, of connection to and partnership with the larger forces of creation. In some ways we are all portals for the forces of creation to act through us. In my cosmology there is a primal essence, which I associate with the void, which all emerges from and returns to, that speaks through all of creation. I associate this with the Tao or the Buddhist sense of the emptiness that is the true nature of all things. In this way the Aries sense of becoming “me” is rooted in a profound sense of my connection with the source that is all things. There is no final individuation, only a sense of becoming more of my part of the whole. I’ve come to understand that when we start to entrain with the forces of nature, like the rotation of the earth around the sun and the seasonal patterns that are expressed through that rotation, then we start to come back into more intimate relationship with the primal force that speaks through all things. It is a way to “remember” in a world of forgetting. Aries can often play into the “forgetting” with its wild individualism and Libra brings us back into a sense of relationship. As someone who often feels outside of social norms, Libra can be challenging for me. She asks me to see the primal forces of creation in the people around me. I can see this more readily in the non-human people I interact with, especially in the nature realms, but to see this in humans or in society in general is trickier for me. My feeling is that we have lost our entrainment to these primal forces in a way that has encouraged rampant individualism at the expense of interconnection. So in some ways this full moon in Libra is an opportunity to come back into alignment in a way that is needed both on an individual and a collective level. May you feel the primal forces working in you and your life during this particular passage of time and may this ripple out in larger ways in your life and those around you! Meditation Breathe in and out in a relaxed way, noticing the way the in breath and the out breath bring balance to your body and mind. This is the balancing nature of airy Libra. The inner and the outer are intimately in tune with each other through the breath. As you breathe in, you are intimately connected with the air around you and all the plants and animals who have breathed this air. And as you breathe out, you contribute some essence of yourself to this larger web. Take a moment to be in silence with this breath of interconnection. Now notice the inner fire that enlivens your being. The warmth of your body. This is the fire of Aries. Take a moment to feel the liveliness of your heartbeat. As it beats, inwardly whisper the phrase, “this is my heart”. Bring a sense of gratitude to the expression of heart that you uniquely bring to the world. What does your heart dream? What does your heart love? How does your heart love? And feel into those toughened places in your heart that life may have caused to constrict and bring some compassion to how even these places are a unique expression of the whole that is you. And also bring attention to how your heart is formed from strands of DNA passed on from generations of lives, made of building blocks that are found in wild nature as well as the stars above. There is a way in which you are uniquely you, but you are also interwoven from all of creation. Take a moment of appreciation for your unique expression of life and its interconnection with the past, present and future of all things.  March's full moon is in Virgo. I honestly have a hard time with Virgo. She triggers the perfectionist in me. As I connect with her more elementally (earth) and also look to her ruling planet (mercury) there is a way in which she takes ideas and visions and translates them into physical reality. She can often be at the cutting edge of making new ideas happen. She can also get caught up in the perfect idea that never quite translates into the perfect reality when brought into the physical plane. She is also known for being the archetype of the healer, which to me is characteristic of her connection between the mind (mercury) and the body (earth). Working with her energy feels like a good opportunity to address the perfectionist in ourselves and become more fluid with our ideas of how things should be versus the reality of how things turn out. It is also an opportunity to tidy up the mind/body connection and perhaps discover some healing in the process.
The Virgo full moon is reflecting the Pisces sun, so we are also in the watery realm of the unconscious. This makes Virgo's healing properties even more potent. Pisces is the place of gestation, the watery womb where the new is formed. Whatever was planted in February during imbolc is starting to form, but it might be on a really unconscious level. For those of you who are tapped into the unconscious, it might feel more conscious or it might be rolling through your dreams, but the idea is that something new is forming, but is not birthed yet. I see Pisces as a creator who is weaving something in the depths of the unconscious from the energy of all possibilities... like there is an infinite palette to choose from and there is a selection of one strand and then another, pure creativity allowing all to be as it is without judgement. With Neptune as its ruler, Pisces has an energy of illusion to its creativity. It is forming what is new through the dreaming of the deepest parts of our being. It is weaving the new form of maya, illusion, that we are dancing with in our yearly creative lifecycle. This is a very different energy than Virgo where it is all about conscious ideas taking final form. Pisces is the unconscious primordial waters where the not-yet manifest is just beginning to form. There is a way in which with this full moon I want to sink into Pisces' waters and allow the depths to inform the Virgo-ian energies of translating thought into form. I want to dream new realities not based on ideas of perfection, but rooted in the wisdom of my subconscious. And I want to tap into the manifesting powers of Virgo to start to make those dreams real and in alignment with my soul's healing path. Meditation Take a moment to breathe in stillness and come to the center of your being. Just a few breaths, allowing yourself to sink into your body. From this place of centeredness, I invite you to bring forward an idea or two that you might have for the future or how you might like your current life to be. What needs to come into form? What needs some tending or healing to come into right alignment with your ideals? Start to hold these thoughts in your body. Where do you feel them in relationship to your body? Is there something that needs to shift or open to come into alignment with these thoughts? Just take a moment to feel into the body relationship with these thoughts. This is the energy of Virgo - of mind/body connection… of thoughts and their counterpart in form. Invite in a moment of extra awareness to the earthiness of your body, the element of Virgo. Send out an intention of goodness to your body and to the earth that surrounds us. May our human thoughts be transformed into goodness for our bodies and for the earth. Now take a minute to connect with your kidneys, feel them in the backside of your body below your ribs. This is the place where the waters of your body get filtered and it is also the connection to the energetic waters of your ancestors. Allow this place to be a connection point to your watery subconscious, maybe expanding your awareness to your back body, the quiet unconscious parts of you. Allow your awareness to sink into your sacral area and the watery creative wisdom held there. This is the energy of the Pisces sun that is being reflected by the moon. Take a moment to receive any wisdom it might have to offer you. Invite in a moment of extra awareness to the waters of your body. Send out an intention of goodness to your personal waters and to the waters in the world around us. May we listen to the unconscious, emotional, deep places in ourselves as we move through our days.  The wild world around us is cyclical in nature. Our earth orbits the sun and this shifts the light and heat on our planet in what we call seasons. These seasons are alchemical processes of change, each initiating a process of life- or death-giving states. There are times of germination, of birthing and growing, of harvesting, of death and of returning to stillness in preparation of the next cycle of growth. Historically humans have looked at the movement of the moon and the stars to help predict these cycles. They noticed patterns of where the sun was placed in the constellations during certain seasons and started to associate earthly natural rhythms and the alchemy found at certain times of the year to these constellations.
We like to think that our psyches are separate from the world and even the galaxy around us, but like the ocean tides moving to the pull of the moon, we feel the pull of the celestial forces around us. I've been fascinated by astrology for some time, but my connection to nature spirits has increased this. As more subtle beings, they are even more in tune with the subtle changes in the celestial realm. I believe this is why the Celtics and even Maori and Aborigine art feature spirals. There is a way in which nature is a series of spirals. The earth around sun. The earth around its axis. The moon around the earth. The planets around the sun. Everything in the heavens is spiraling and in correlation all of creation here on earth, including consciousness, is spiraling too. What wasn't clear to me until recently is that we can view the entire human lifespan as one larger spiral... I see it as an orbit around our evolving soul/heart. And during that cycle we go through the same stages of alchemy that we find in a calendar year... germination, birth, maturation and death. These cycles happen multiple times in a life, but what nature has shared with me is that each human has an overarching unique rhythm to this cycle that is based on their birth chart. In my life cycle astrology readings I take people through their life map to explore themes in their creative rhythms. We look at ways to entrain to the alchemical forces at work during this moment in your life and unpack some of the experiences you may have had previously in your life during other alchemical stages as well as look at what is to come. What is powerful for me in these readings is that it deconstructs the idea that at every stage of our life we must be living into full productivity. On contrary, there are times where the prevailing energy is asking us to rest, go within, reform ourselves at our deepest levels. Giving this consciousness and giving ourselves permission to be as nature is intending us to be is liberating. If you would like to explore your personal alchemical process and where you are in your creative lifecycle, do reach out to me! |
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January 2024
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Photos from steve p2008, rex.on.life
